Crows
by Serymn
Summary: Kakashi is not alone when he visits their graves.


Kakashi _felt_ Rin die while his arm was skewered through her chest. It feels very warm around the arm still in her: heaving blood and bone and organs, he felt her last shaky breaths that tapered to nothing. He roughly pulls his hand back, spreading more blood on his hands. He isn't even gentle. He didn't carefully lower her to the ground, but she fell to the floor with her eyes still wide and accusing. Death wasn't neat business, he knows. It would haunt him years after that, how Rin looked at him when she died.

Each time he uses raikiri to finish an enemy, there's a brief flash the way thunder turns night into day for a second – everything disappears and he's back to the moment he killed Rin. He's back to seeing his own thirteen-year-old hand tearing her thirteen-year-old heart, scorching it to nothing with the burning electricity of his chakra. He has accepted that the feeling of gut-wrenching guilt that hasn't lessened in years, will not lessen in any way. He feels that he deserves it as a punishment for his failure to keep a promise. His own secret haunting.

#

"When I'm here talking to you, Obito, I feel like you're listening to me. It's weird; I know I'm only fooling myself."

Obito sits, leaning on the opposite side of the black memorial stone. He can pretend he's a ghost, since Kakashi can't see or feel him anyway. He listens to everything Kakashi says. He feels it when Kakashi's arrives, and without rhyme or reason they are both here at the same time. He knows when Kakashi goes here like he knows his own eyes. Kakashi is keeping a part of him, after all.

Kakashi stays and talks for hours, about his latest missions or recent events or just gossip among the jounin. Obito feels he knows Kakashi more now than they were still teammates, than when he was still alive. Obito cringes inside when Kakashi mentions how he's still haunted by their deaths, how he imagines things would be if their whole team was alive now. It was his guilt speech he repeats in each of his visits, different words on the same subject. It's the only thing Obito can't stand to hear again, but he stays and listens.

"Both of you will remain young, forever. Come to think of it, I'm now even older than Minato-sensei when he passed away," Kakashi would say. He can feel Kakashi smile a bitter smile under the mask, can feel the look of bereavement in his eyes.

Some days he simply wants to reveal himself, surprise Kakashi by sneaking at his back and wrapping his arms around Kakashi's waist. He imagines tugging down that mask and removing the lopsided forehead protector covering the eye Obito gave him. That way he can see his whole face, and he would kiss the vertical scar on his eye and the lips always hidden under layers of masks.

He'd whisper to Kakashi's shocked face, _It's okay. I'm here, I was always here. We'll erase your guilt and suffering. I can create a better world and Rin will be there. I will be there_. He imagines how Kakashi's tears would fall, after years of talking to a grave that doesn't answer and finding out he isn't alone here after all. He'll kiss each of those tears away, taste the bitterness of the years in the saline flavor. Kakashi would lean in his embrace and and press their lips together, taste his own tears on Obito's mouth.

In his mind's eye, Kakashi agrees. _We'll destroy this world to make way for something so much better – a new reality where you don't have to suffer, where I don't have to hide here and pretend I'm dead_.

In his mind's eye, he holds Kakashi tighter and their cheeks press together. Kakashi will finally let go of their ghosts. _Yes. You, me, and Rin_, Kakashi would say.

But he doesn't.

He's remembering the value of _patience_ Madara instilled in him. He repeats the word in his head and waits until the urge to simply show himself to Kakashi fades. Here in the cemetery with Kakashi, his mind is at peace and free from all his responsibilities. By the time Kakashi leaves, Obito would disappear to Kamui again and go back to another world with schemes and plans to keep track of. He's a busy man. He's not the dead Obito, but Madara Uchiha.

Yes, just a little more waiting. Patience. It will happen.

* * *

AN: I accidentally deleted this here, so posted again. Okay, that was just a short introspective piece because I couldn't write other things I'm supposed to write. I have a better fic rec, "Here's to us, Who's like us" by emilyenrose on AO3.


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